


Our Good Friend Stone Brick

by Tolpen



Series: Downey Centric Headcanon Pile [3]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Downey might be a terrible person but he is a damn good teacher, Even if he says so himself, School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 21:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12176559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tolpen/pseuds/Tolpen
Summary: Each school has its own running gags. This is about a born of one.An idea I wanted to get out of head and write it down, finally.





	Our Good Friend Stone Brick

Applied Alchemy. Downey still thought about it as Applied Alchemy. In the school curriculum, which Downey wrote himself, stood 'Poisons' but that was now, in the simpler time when being an Assassin wasn't literally a secret worth your life.

Applied Alchemy, Algebra, and Architecture. Downey's three A's. He liked teaching. No, no. He loved teaching. He was, as he noted sadly every time he spoke to his colleagues, one of the few actually enjoying when the students understood, when he caught their attention, when they wanted to know more about the topic. It was easy with the Architecture. Fairly challenging with Algebra, however, it was mostly because Downey was a damn good teacher, even if he had to say so himself.

Surprisingly, the true challenge and the test of his skills were Poisons. It was surprising, not for him but for the other people. 'Lord Downey,' they always said, 'how can it be so hard for you to teach a subject in which your mastery is legendary?' (Downey didn't mention that he'd got his Poison degree much later after his postgraduate. After all, degree is only a paper, not the skills.

Downey always got the students who were failing their Poisons. Partly because he had a personal war going on with Mericet, partly because he could explain the subject well enough for the students to fail the class less or even not at all. He like teaching Poisons. No, no. He loved teaching poisons. His particularly favourite was the Tuesday morning class. It was from eight to ten o'clock, and he was always ten minutes late for the regular City Council meeting because of it.

This one was a night class. Night classes were also good, it was a great excuse to have a break from all the night paperwork. There was something eerie and mysteriously sacred about the classroom dimly illuminated by candlelight. Downey felt almost nostalgic, being suddenly reminded of his student years when the guild (Downey denied it the capital letter before becoming an official Guild) was held in secrecy as was most of the academy lessons. It also looked quite neat.

He put down his blue folder on the desk with a slam and wished the class a good evening. No matter how friendly approach he decided to try, they were still scared of him. He gave up halfway thorough the first month. And then, if they were scared shitless, they wouldn't do stupid things in his class, or at least less of them. The class was silent. Downey wrote down the absence and then held out a stack of papers. 'Mister Constantin, be so kind and give your classmates their essays.' Constantin took the essays and began searching for their owners.

'Considering this ways your homework for which I not only allowed but even advised you to use the Guild's library and , the results are dreadful.' The silence was dripping with shame. 'They, however, aren't pitiful. And therefore I came to the conclusion,' Downey took a piece of chalk in his hand, 'We could move on a new topic.' It took him seven second to write 'Inorganic poisons' on the blackboard. Downey had one of the neatest handwriting his students had ever seen. It was as if he was copying each letter from a book (which was exactly the case).

Inorganic poisons, thought Downey, are much simpler than the organic ones. On the other hand, 'much simpler' was a very relative term when you realised that for example young Twinkleman considered rice one of Ferngreen's poisons. Poor old Ferngreen had to be rotating in his grave.

'I would like to start with a very special subgroup called geotoxines.' The class was making notes. Chances were that if you had notes and knew which parts you shouldn't repeat to your examiners, you would pass the final tests with eighty-five plus percentage. 'Interestingly enough, geotoxines are not deadly to organic life forms. However, they proved themselves to be lethal to gargoyles, trolls, golems, and the like. Please, open your textbooks at the according chapter, we will have a theoretic exercise.' Theoretic exercises were liked. Downey would describe the symptoms, and students had to figure out the poison. 

'So. Your good friend Stone Brick-'

'Excuse me, Doctor,' interrupted Stilltoe, who looked nothing like her mother (Thanks, gods, thought Downey), 'what happened to our friend Bleedwell?' Downey used his late classmate as another theoretic exercise.

'Not even Bleedwell can poison himself with geotoxines. Anyway, Stone Brick -' and then Sergeant Detritus birsted in without bothering to open the door. The commander followed him in.

The class was over. The students had never found out what was Downey's presence needed for, but either it screwed the Headmaster over or really made him mad (or both), because the next lesson their good friend Stone Brick turned into Sergeant Detritus, and it stayed so ever since.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Stilltoe who looks nothing like her mother (thanks gods) is a callback to the 'ballerina talk' in Not a People Person. Clever, you figured it out all on your own.


End file.
